Pursuit of Happiness: Fatboi Sharif Finds Serenity on the Subway

With macabre song titles like, “2Pac’s Autopsy Photo” in his catalog, it’s safe to say Fatboi Sharif has an ongoing relationship with dark thoughts. But he doesn’t let them consume him. He owes that to a chill attitude. And the fact that he actually went to therapy years ago. 

“You learn stuff as a kid and when you reach your teenage and adult years, you take what you learn from it and kind of enhance it,” says Sharif, whose horror-inspired aesthetics can be anything from jarring to truly cathartic. Those enhancements he speaks of involve things like increased personal reflection, audiobooks and long, aimless trips on public transit in and out of his native New Jersey. Like his rap style, some of it can be unconventional. But whoever said conventional was so great, anyway? 

Speaking to Okayplayer for Pursuit of Happiness, Fatboi Sharif gives the lowdown on how he stays right the right way while dropping some hidden-in-plain-sight gems to help you do the same. 

Fatboi Sharif: To get away from negativity, sometimes I might just come out to New York from Jersey, and ride the subway back and forth and do a lot of writing. It’s a common, cool coping mechanism for me. I notice that when I'm able to sit within myself and take it all in spiritually without outside forces, it’s good for me. So a lot of times I decompress and I write songs on the train. I wrote a lot of my best stuff there, or just sitting in my house with my eyes closed.

Therapy doesn’t make you a weak person. It doesn’t make you a crazy person. Neither does medicine. When I was younger, I went to therapy. Some things that are blessings for me were a lot of the different things they teach you in therapy. I was able to bring a lot of those things into my adult life. When consumed the right way, I'm not against medication for people who need it. I've heard people tell me, 'I don't want to take that. I can deal with it myself!' And I'm like, 'Obviously, you're not dealing with it that damn great.' You might need another thing that can get you over that hump instead of drugs, alcohol, sex, and money. You just have to find out what works for you and your situation.

I notice I get more aggravated just being around certain types of people and certain types of energy. A lot of times, with things you want to accomplish in your life, you’ll psych yourself out of it just by saying certain things. Or someone else will. So, if you came to me like, 'Yo, I want to start a fashion company,' and the first thing I'm saying to you is why you can't do it, you probably shouldn't have me around you. What you should be saying is, 'Oh, that’s dope,' and If I wanted to give you any type of criticism, it should just be more of I should be more like, 'You should think about this or that.' But that's how we are a lot of times as people. So it’s important to keep certain energy around to keep you elevated. It’s important to keep yourself in your happy place.